The invention generally relates to wireless communications, and more specifically, the invention relates to a technique for reserving bandwidth for communications over a wireless system.
Wireless systems, such as wireless local area networks (LANs), for example, have been supporting the communication of digital data for the past several years. Most recently, wireless systems are being used to communicate data for real time applications, such as applications that involve the transmission of voice and/or video data.
As an example, a wireless LAN may include several local stations, each of which forms a node of the wireless LAN. The wireless LAN may be subdivided into cells, and in each of the cells, the constituent nodes may communicate with an access point (AP). The AP, in turn, typically establishes communication with a wired network, such as an Ethernet network, for example.
Due to the wireless communication, one local station may attempt to transmit a frame of data at the same time that another local station or the AP attempts to transmit a frame of data, a condition called a “collision.” For purposes of preventing a collision from occurring, the wireless LAN may use a carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) contention scheme. In this scheme, before a local station transmits a frame, the local station determines if the wireless transmission medium is free from any carrier waves, and if not, the local station backs off from transmitting the frame for a time that is specified by a collision avoidance algorithm.
Because many of the local stations may be simultaneously attempting to communicate frames over the wireless transmission medium, a real time video or voice data stream of frames that is being communicated between one of the local stations and the AP may be continually interrupted due to the above-described contention scheme. Unfortunately, the real time traffic typically requires a relatively high bandwidth and has severe delay constraints, and these interruptions may limit the bandwidth that is available for the real time transmissions. In addition, wireless LANs are plagued with interference problems. Due to the inherent mobility within wireless networks, traditional schemes, such as those used with wired networks, cannot be directly applied.
Thus, there is a continuing need for a technique to address one or more of the problems that are stated above.